ICS News

same-sex marriages Ñ?oncept with rainbow rings

People acquainted with gays and lesbians tend to support same-sex marriage later

Posted on December 12, 2018

UNIVERSITY
PARK, Pa. — Friendship bonds that may seem superficial at first glance
could be just deep enough to produce attitude changes that help spark
social transformations, according to a Penn State sociologist.

In a study, people who met and became acquainted with at least one
gay person were more likely to later change their minds about same-sex
marriage and become more accepting of gay and lesbian people in general,
said Daniel DellaPosta, assistant professor of sociology and an
affiliate of the Institute for CyberScience.

According to DellaPosta, sociologists have long proposed that when
people establish certain relationships, they may change their attitudes
about issues, often referred to as the contact effect. In one example of
the contact effect, sociologists have debated whether knowing a person
with a different sexual orientation can influence attitudes on larger
issues, such as the acceptance of gay rights and same-sex marriage.
However, prior to this study, the theory had yet to be rigorously
tested.

“What I thought we needed in this area was a test of the contact
hypothesis that was conservative — perhaps overly conservative — using
the most stringent test we could possibly devise,” said DellaPosta.

DellaPosta examined data from the 2006, 2008 and 2010 editions of
General Social Survey, or GSS, a sociological survey of opinions that
Americans hold on a range of issues.

In 2006, about 45 percent of the people who had a gay or lesbian
acquaintance expressed support for same-sex marriage. By 2010, that
figure had increased to 61 percent. In 2006, only 22 percent people who
did not have a gay or lesbian acquaintance said they approved of
same-sex marriage. That number fell to 18 percent in 2010.

DellaPosta said that the survey data does not reveal exactly when
these relationships were established, which makes the test more
rigorous.

“By taking people in that 2006 baseline who were acquainted with gay
and lesbian people and comparing them with other people who were similar
in all visible regards, including their measured attitude toward
same-sex marriage and gay and lesbian people at that 2006 baseline, who
were not acquainted with gay and lesbian people, you can get a really
conservative test of the contact hypothesis,” said DellaPosta, who
reported his findings in a recent issue of the journal Socius.

The findings could shed light on how “coming out” among gay and
lesbian people impacts the general acceptance of gay and lesbian people.
In the 1973 GSS, just 11 percent of Americans felt “homosexuality is
not wrong at all.” By 2016, that number had grown to 52 percent.

DellaPosta suggests that coming out may facilitate more contact with
gay and lesbian people that then accelerates an attitude change about
issues that affect the gay community.

Further, DellaPosta suggested that the contact with a gay person does
not even need to be especially deep for the contact effect to appear.

“If you have very superficial contact, like just seeing someone from
an outgroup in the grocery store or on the subway, you may focus more on
selective behaviors that reinforce your prejudices — like someone
dressing, talking or acting in a way that reinforces some negative
stereotype of that group,” said DellaPosta. “But, if you take the next
level to mere acquaintanceship — someone whose name you know, someone
who, if you saw them on the street, you might stop and chat with them
for a moment — the contact effect sets in because when you suddenly have
to interact with someone from an outgroup as an individual, it forces
you to reconsider your biases.”

According to DellaPosta, having a closer, deeper bond with a gay or
lesbian acquaintance did not result in an even larger shift of attitude
toward same-sex marriage. He added that the contact effect actually is
larger for people who have a low probability of having a gay or lesbian
acquaintance.

The GSS, created in 1972, is a sociological survey collected by the
National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago. About
2,000 people responded to the GSS 2006 survey, but only a smaller
portion were asked about their acquaintances and re-surveyed in 2008 and
2010. Just over half — about 53 percent — of those surveyed said they
had at least one gay acquaintance.

Other research has looked at whether the contact theory works for
other intergroup relationships, such as how people feel about immigrants
and their attitudes toward immigration.

Computations for this research were performed on Penn State’s Institute for CyberScience Advanced CyberInfrastructure (ICS-ACI).